Early Entertainment Venues Evolved From Opera House To Movie Theaters

FLASHBACK - ORANGE COUNTY HISTORY

Orlando was still very much a frontier town in 1884, but the sturdy pioneers of that era were not without some social graces or the desire to be entertained in a lavish way.

In that year, Orange County's first large community center and entertainment hall arrived with construction of the Orlando Opera House.

Built on Court Street between Pine and Church streets, the wooden building measured 50 by 150 feet. Seating was on wooden benches, the only ventilation came through windows and double doors, and the auditorium was lighted by kerosene lamps with tin reflectors and candles on brackets.

Local talent staged most of the shows, but traveling acts and minstrels sometimes brought professional entertainment, according to Eve Bacon's account in Orlando: A Centennial History.

On New Year's Eve 1887 at the Opera House, ''the society people of South Florida came together'' for a nostalgic party as Orange County's elite dressed in old costumes and ball gowns and wore their hair powdered white, according to an Orlando Reporter-Star account in 1936.

Also in the 1880s, opera houses were built in Maitland, Sanford and Kissimmee. While featuring mostly home-grown entertainment, they also served as civic centers, providing meeting space for clubs, church services, flower shows and even roller skating.

But after the turn of the century, the new trend in entertainment was moving pictures. Nickelodeons came first, followed by large, often elaborately furnished movie houses.

J.B. Magruder opened Orlando's second opera house in December 1911. Movies were shown there, and stage events were produced. Known as the Lucerne Theatre, it could seat up to 1,000 people. It had an elevated floor and gallery with segregated seating for whites and blacks, Bacon wrote.

''The steel ceiling was finished in white and gold, the floor wooden over cement. The height from stage to scenery loft was 75 feet,'' her book said.

The Pastime Theatre on west Pine Street, which was open early in 1911, may have been Orlando's first movie theater.

After extensive renovation that began in February 1912, Col. T.J. Watkins reopened the Pastime the following year as the Grand Theatre. It had brass chandeliers, potted palms in the lobby and crepe-paper roses everywhere, according to files at the Orange County Historical Museum.

The Grand and Lucerne theaters were Orlando's finest movie houses in the early days. Pianos, and later pipe organs, provided musical accompaniment to silent movies.

When Gone With the Wind was shown at the Grand in 1939, it filled every seat in the house during a two-month run. The Grand became the Astor Theater in 1953. It was torn down in 1965.

But perhaps Orlando's best-known movie house of the early days was the Beacham Theater on Orange Avenue. In 1921, businessman Braxton Beacham - onetime mayor of Orlando and a developer of Taft in south Orange - bought a long section of the block just north of Central Boulevard - the former site of the county jail where hangings once were conducted - and built the Beacham Theater.

The Beacham hosted vaudeville shows as well as movies in the 1920s. Air conditioning was installed in the '30s.

The Beacham closed in 1975, but the building was reopened the following year as the Great Southern Music Hall. It later was home to Laser World; then to Moulin Orange, a Las Vegas-style cabaret that lasted four months in 1983-84; and then to Valentyne's Celebrity Dinner Theatre, which opened in 1987.

The historic building at 46 N. Orange Ave. is now the home of the Zuma Beach Club, a nightclub.